New Music From Brother Fyodor, Allmos

The new album Rust from the Johnson City, Tenn. one-man band Brother Fyodor (a.k.a. Dustin Gingrow, the guitarist of Secret Bleeders) is a dark smorgasbord of prickly shards, drawing lines between noise, no-wave and industrial music while residing in its own peculiar intersection; there’s also an oblique goth spectre, casting its shadow over the proceedings but without overdone theatrics.

The opening track “Hunted” doesn’t hold back, with abrasive high frequency sounds, feedback and noise, guided by death-march beats that are reminiscent of those heard on the early, primal Swans releases; the vocals convey feeling instead of meaning, and here they are both seemingly tormented and intoxicated.

A post-punk-esque bass line is used on “Resistor” which uses a mix of warped spoken words, sullied beyond recognition, and anguished and sustained shouts of terror that are disturbingly muffled in the mix as if they were captive cries.

“Failure in the Cave” offers effects-processing onanism, with extreme envelope processing and a tremolo effect used on a bass tone, making it cut in and out to possibly suggest motion, like running away from some unknown Lovecraftian terror; eventually, the listener realizes that the ear-shredding noise heard on the track is actually severely altered vocals.

The oddball track “Shelter” is based on an acoustic guitar strum, but it perverts the notion of an acoustic folk song with a clumsy facsimile that’s distorted on purpose with obscured singing, and “Call to the Voice” serves up amorphous, extraterrestrial transmissions and suggests aural nihilism, with the equivalent of a crazy person flopping around in mud.

While the album’s around a half-hour long, toward the end, the listener may feel like they’ve been through a wringer, so the final track, “Lost Waxing,” actually serves as a sort of cool-down number—a breather for a demanding and compelling album.

Allmos

Sound Affects, Vol. 1

(Fresh Selects)

The Brooklyn-based instrumental hip-hop solo project Allmos is the work of Allan Cole, who with Darien Birks comprises the ‘70s-obsessed hip-hop outfit The Stuyvesants, and the name “Allmos” is a play on “almost,” which was Cole’s response to friends who would ask him if his debut release, Sound Affects, Vol. 1, was completed.

It also represents Cole’s creative process, where he is trying to recreate the sounds he hears in his head, but instead of matching those sounds exactly, he’s almost there; however, as he strives to record his internal soundtrack, he makes new discoveries and nurtures new ideas along the way as a welcome byproduct of this work. It’s the journey that proves to be as important as the goal.

This also underscores how Cole’s Allmos material differs from his music with The Stuyvesants, which operated by taking an idea and then fleshing it out; with Allmos, Cole is willing to play and experiment until something sounds interesting to him. Also, while Cole’s work with The Stuyvesants leaned on using sampled records, with Allmos, the emphasis is on live instrumentation, drum programming and homemade samples.

The ten tracks of Sound Affects, Vol. 1 are fairly brief, with only one selection breaking the 3-minute barrier, and the listener’s first impression is that it’s a relatively minimal approach; the second impression is that it doesn’t require more. It’s mellow and largely relaxing, but the beats are immediate and dominant in the mix, like on “Sometimes, Why?” which sports crisp, upfront beats on top of soul-inflected keyboard textures.

“Aromas Naturalle” uses a pattern of basic keyboard chords and adds glistening flourishes and a subtle and muted bass line, among amorphous, drifting waves. Tiny disruptions pepper the album, like the studio stuttering of “Black Ting” or the woozy pitch bending on “So Remarkable,” and a highlight is the track “$’s to Donuts” with tight loops, metallic rattles and a distinctive clavinet pattern.

It is far from being the most ambitious hip-hop album you’ll hear, and it’s not the most dense or wild one, either; rather, it has its own laid-back charm, and on its own terms, it more than almost hits the target.